Omgheeee!!! I’m back and better than ever, dairy free too! Not really. That was just a play on my “ghee” exclamation because nothing describes my personality and current mood better than an overused slang term mixed into a bad pun. I don’t want to milk that too much so let me start off officially by saying “THANK YOU SO MUCH!” for reading this! Maybe you’re one of my 609 Email subscribers?! Way to hang in there with me because I know it’s been awhile since I got a new original post out; over a year to be more precise. Are you wondering what happened to the Dear Hairdresser??? Ummm… lots of stuff and I can’t wait to tell you all about it without getting too cheesy…. whoops too late!
Last fall, four years after starting my website and blog, I lost all my data including my web presence and posts. Let me elaborate on that in case you aren’t sure how much it sucked and how stupid I felt for letting it happen. Over 25 articles, some of which were being read daily all over the world, had evaporated. The “little site that could” was a ghost and I was forced to learn a painful lesson about what happens when you let your web hosting service lapse with no backup….smh. That all was defeating in itself but what was more difficult to face was that I had lost my passion to write and basically ignored my blog out of existence.
You can see where this is headed right? Straight to the pity party I decided to throw myself until I started believing there MUST be a way to find my old posts and start new again! I was right by “luck” of the Universal Internet Law ( Once You Share ‘Tis Always There ) because my old posts were hiding in snapshots on a web crawler site. My number one fan and childhood bestie Krista also blessed me with her archived subscriber emails containing my posts. I knew in my heart it would all workout and NOW here we are 5 years later ( my lucky number ) and it’s definitely feeling like all of this was a divine lesson meant to test my drive and help me shape my voice in new ways. Well that’s my fairytale story at least and you know how I love a happy ending!!
Speaking of fairytales, now that I have charmed and delighted you again I wanted to share something that I couldn’t in my first post and that is how unhappy I was in my life when I decided to start DearHairdresser. At the time I was 10 years into a relationship that was more bad than good and equally dissatisfied Feeling stuck in a job that mirrored my dying relationship in joy and potential. I needed something more than what I had and I knew what made me feel the best was the relationships I had with my customers. I hated my job but I loved my customers and the conversations we had in the chair, the stories and secrets that were shared. It was real and pure. I wanted to share it with more people. I needed to, so I timidly began the journey to become The Dear Hairdresser.
A Newborn Blog, A Year Old Baby, and the Secret to Looking Great Forever is my debut post and I’m very proud of it. I remember how many weeks it took me to even figure out what a blog was let alone WordPress! I didn’t know anything but I am a whiz with a search engine and I figured out what I needed to do and did some stuff. Then I did some more stuff and eventually I made something and I knew more. It’s amazing I even HAD a site to lose considering I’m typing this out on my iPhone with my index fingers. It’s also one of the reasons I can’t hang at anyone’s pity party longer than it takes to tell them that there is no such thing as a fairytale ending and if you’re waiting for some outside force to save you, it is NOT going to happen. It’s got to be you and it’s going to be hard.
I want to share a new tidbit of advice that Hairdressers have been using for decades and that is if you want to try something new you’ve got to FAKE IT TIL YOU MAKE Normally I wouldn’t recommend being fake and don’t worry I’m sure YOUR stylist is being honest about their experience, wink wink. I very literally mean we are ALL creating our own identities and realities every day through our thoughts, actions, and beliefs and that is important work!! Every budding professional or craftsman had a “first time” they tried something new and felt like a fool doing it, guaranteed! If you need a little encouragement I’ve got your back and it’s pretty easy to just pretend you know what you’re doing until you do. You probably have done it a million times already you just keep learning and practicing until you are a pro, or a least not a faker anymore!
Looking for more proof that trying new things helps you grow, even if your first attempts are less than special? Then please check out my very first video on my You Tube channel I call The Dear Hairdresser, where I share pieces of my life in little bite sized video clips. I started it over a year ago and have created hundreds of videos now and guess what….some of them are actually pretty good. Who knew??? Everyone else who ever left their own comfort zone to try something new.